Without A River (City Yields)

[pineappledan]

Let me ask this then,
Why is the culture and golden age bonus from baths considered to be the best "counterweight" for the superior wells? I'm not arguing for change for change's sake, I am honestly very curious about why culture is the buffed yield. Does the early power spike of wells always lead to a culture lead and thus is balanced out by culture from baths?

And why is culture chosen instead of science? If baths were +10% science during GA (or WLTKD) instead, would players complain that progress is sub-optimal on non-freshwater starts?

Yes, there should be advantages to non-freshwater cities but I think using baths to tip the scales of balance is arbitrary and interferes with GA and culture. Culture is widely accepted as the top priority yield, in fact the #1 advice that veterans often have for newcomers is to prioritize culture and production over food and science. It strikes me as contradictory to then have baths locked out for half of cities

that is far too bizarre and conspiratorial a question to merit a serious response.

You basically said “baths are bad and arbitrary because they do [describes what baths do], and that’s bad because culture is good”

...okay. You’ve failed to even lay out an argument for why more culture on river cities is a bad idea except to say that culture is a thing. Yes, I can confirm that potential culture generation is the main reward right now for settling on rivers. No, I can’t defend any argument for why it should be any other way because no counterproposal or material criticism has been offered for why it should be different.

 

[Bromar1]

You’ve failed to even lay out an argument for why more culture on river cities is a bad idea except to say that culture is a thing

Sorry, I wasn't being thorough. I'm not sure what the best change would be. Others in the thread have posited changes (moving the +10% bonus elsewhere, etc)
I'm arguing against the sentiment that baths, a core building for certain playstyles should be terrain dependent. No other terrain dependent buildings are like this. Lighthouses, harbors, stoneworks, stables are terrain dependent but only affect food, prod, and trade.

Remember when observatories had low base science and used to scale strongly from mountains? That was changed to high base, low scale because it was a core building for a playstyles.

Maybe I'm just a bad player that can't capitalize on Wells to make up for it but when the advice on the forums is that culture is King, it feels really bad to miss out on baths.

 

[tu_79]

Early well is early production for an early army. Non river cities have the advantage of the early aggression. Usually this is where most players begin to snowball.

If you don't capitalize this early power, then that's your problem.

The counterweight is a mid game culture boost, if you survive your non river enemy's early attacks.

 

[doublex55]

Early well is early production for an early army. Non river cities have the advantage of the early aggression. Usually this is where most players begin to snowball.

If you don't capitalize this early power, then that's your problem.

The counterweight is a mid game culture boost, if you survive your non river enemy's early attacks.

Somehow you guys have been able to convince me that the gold on flat non-freshwater start is fine and baths are fine. Just waiting on the 10% culture during golden age in capital and I’m happy. I don’t really care if the tradition culture gets moved elsewhere. I kinda like it being on the bottom of the tree since it’s it gives tradition a reason to go top, middle, and bottom for guilds, gardens, and baths.

 

[Gidoza]

Early well is early production for an early army. Non river cities have the advantage of the early aggression. Usually this is where most players begin to snowball.

If you don't capitalize this early power, then that's your problem.

The counterweight is a mid game culture boost, if you survive your non river enemy's early attacks.

I personally don't buy it. The extra food that you initially get on a river tile (or Production on Hills) is functional for a minimum of 20 turns (but more like 40) before you ever get that well running to do anything for you. That's either more Production, or simply more pop (thus more production) to do stuff that the Well would otherwise be doing. If the Well in fact does outperform a river tile, I doubt it is by very much. The argument strikes me as dubious at best.

 

[CrazyG]

The argument strikes me as dubious at best.

You don't lose 1 hammer compared to the hilly city, you trade 1 hammer for 1 gold. Which is worse but its not just a lost yield, gold is useful.

Give it a try. I love starting with a well. You also spend a lot less on a well than on a watermill, and you have different options for technology choices too; if most or all of your cities have wells you can delay masonry for a while.

 

[doublex55]

You don't lose 1 hammer compared to the hilly city, you trade 1 hammer for 1 gold. Which is worse but its not just a lost yield, gold is useful.

Give it a try. I love starting with a well. You also spend a lot less on a well than on a watermill, and you have different options for technology choices too; if most or all of your cities have wells you can delay masonry for a while.

The argument that convinced me that the flat yields can be useful is that 1 gold can be better than 1 good when you don’t want to grow anymore. This is especially relevant with authority where cities start with 2 pop. You want to grow to 3 or 4 pop and then gold is better than food. Hammer is always better tho unless you got unlucky and have NO way to get any gold from improvements and can’t afford to maintain your army let alone build more buildings/units.

 

[Minh Le]

I intentionally settle off river sometimes to get that 1 gold so I can buy an unit sooner.
It works with spear rush strategy.

 

[mikes61293]

Flatland fresh water tiles should produce more food than flat tiles not on fresh water. Civ is a terrain dependent game, not all starts should be equal. Trying to make every starting situation perfectly balanced ruins the dynamic part of the game. As others have stated there are ways to mitigate not having a fresh water start, such as buying extra units and conquering better land

Society: Coming to Dank River Valley Near You